This fork modifies the dart_style package to use tabs instead of spaces for indentation. The motivation for this came from this awfully sad conversation that I came across while trying to figure out why I can't customize the indentation for my project in vscode.

Since it should be possible to decide for yourself whether you want to use nice single tab characters whose effective width can be configured on-demand in any IDE and are literally made for indentation or annoying messy little spaces, this simple patch does just that.

You can configure the indentation in the Indent class at lib/src/constants.dart .

I might later add options to configure indentation options at runtime (probably not lol).

Simply run dart compile exe bin/format.dart to compile the executable at bin/format.exe

For tools that use dart format I made a little helper script (dart.sh) that overrides this function with the patched formatter, although there seem to be some differences in command-line arguments between this formatter and the one bundled in the dart-sdk so it might not work.

If you want a simple way to use this formatter in vscode I found this extension that lets you register commands to use as custom formatters.

The dart_style package defines an automatic, opinionated formatter for Dart code. It replaces the whitespace in your program with what it deems to be the best formatting for it. Resulting code should follow the Dart style guide but, moreso, should look nice to most human readers, most of the time.

The formatter handles indentation, inline whitespace, and (by far the most difficult) intelligent line wrapping. It has no problems with nested collections, function expressions, long argument lists, or otherwise tricky code.

The formatter turns code like this:

// BEFORE formatting
if (tag=='style'||tag=='script'&&(type==null||type == TYPE_JS
      ||type==TYPE_DART)||
  tag=='link'&&(rel=='stylesheet'||rel=='import')) {}

into:

// AFTER formatting
if (tag == 'style' ||
  tag == 'script' &&
      (type == null || type == TYPE_JS || type == TYPE_DART) ||
  tag == 'link' && (rel == 'stylesheet' || rel == 'import')) {}

The formatter will never break your code—you can safely invoke it automatically from build and presubmit scripts.

The formatter can also apply non-whitespace changes to make your code consistently idiomatic. You must opt into these by passing either --fix which applies all style fixes, or any of the --fix--prefixed flags to apply specific fixes.

For example, running with --fix-named-default-separator changes this:

greet(String name, {String title: "Captain"}) {
  print("Greetings, $title $name!");
}

into:

greet(String name, {String title = "Captain"}) {
  print("Greetings, $title $name!");
}

The formatter is part of the unified dart developer tool included in the Dart SDK, so most users get it directly from there. That has the latest version of the formatter that was available when the SDK was released.

IDEs and editors that support Dart usually provide easy ways to run the formatter. For example, in WebStorm you can right-click a .dart file and then choose Reformat with Dart Style.

Here's a simple example of using the formatter on the command line:

$ dart format test.dart

This command formats the test.dart file and writes the result to the file.

dart format takes a list of paths, which can point to directories or files. If the path is a directory, it processes every .dart file in that directory or any of its subdirectories.

By default, it formats each file and write the formatting changes to the files. If you pass --output show, it prints the formatted code to stdout.

You may pass a -l option to control the width of the page that it wraps lines to fit within, but you're strongly encouraged to keep the default line length of 80 columns.

If you want to use the formatter in something like a [presubmit script][] or [commit hook][], you can pass flags to omit writing formatting changes to disk and to update the exit code to indicate success/failure:

$ dart format --output=none --set-exit-if-changed .

If you need to run a different version of the formatter, you can globally activate the package from the dart_style package on pub.dev:

$ pub global activate dart_style
$ pub global run dart_style:format ...

The package also exposes a single dart_style library containing a programmatic API for formatting code. Simple usage looks like this:

import 'package:dart_style/dart_style.dart';

main() {
  final formatter = DartFormatter();

  try {
    print(formatter.format("""
    library an_entire_compilation_unit;

    class SomeClass {}
    """));

    print(formatter.formatStatement("aSingle(statement);"));
  } on FormatterException catch (ex) {
    print(ex);
  }
}

• Before sending an email, see if you are asking a frequently asked question.

• Before filing a bug, or if you want to understand how work on the formatter is managed, see how we track issues.